“The press has done an admirable (albeit belated) job with the technical complexities of MMS’s (Minerals Management Services of the Interior Department) administrative failings. What is not being asked, and what the press needs to focus on, is whether MMS’s problems are endemic to the entire federal government.”
From Nieman Watchdog
Two stories in the media raised an eyebrow in June:
One was a front-page takeout on June 10 in USA Today on adult pools in Las Vegas. A legitimate story, to be sure, reflecting the world we live in. What was remarkable, considering the BP disaster and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, was that for the next five days on the top of the USA Today website the pool story continued to be No. 1 among the Top Five Most Popular Stories on the site.
On June 15 — five days after the original pools story ran — it still led the list. The most popular stories were:
- Adult and topless pools make a splash in…
- Sand drives Army to ditch Velcro on pants
- ‘Touchdown Jesus’ statue in Ohio destroyed…
- Perez Hilton fires back about Miley Cyrus…
- Jeanie Buss on beau Phil Jackson,…
The second story worth note concerned the dramatic drop in what is called “watchdog reporting”, published in the American Journalism Review (AJR). In summary, the story chronicles the media’s abandonment of coverage of many federal agencies and departments “whose actions have a huge impact on the lives of American citizens.”
What is American journalism coming to? And does the public care?
The USA Today example suggests that the role of ratings that have watered down television and radio news coverage the past couple of decades is now becoming a bigger factor in choosing what kinds of stories should be covered in daily newspapers. Editors now have measurements of how many hits a story gets, how long the reader spends with the story, where the story is being read, etc. They also can tell if a story gets high readership beyond the day of publication. According to a mid-June Pew Research Center Report on new media/old media, “news today is increasingly a shared social experience. Half of Americans say they rely on the people around them to find out at least some of the news they need to know.”
The watchdog story suggests that downsizing of newsrooms, that resulted as much from corporatization as the internet, is depriving readers of news they need while enabling these powerful government entities to function with little oversight.
Meanwhile, who is watching state and county agencies and departments? Citizen journalists? As valuable as they are, they probably never will fill the vacuum.
What’s at stake is the maintaining of a well-informed public.
The media has to figure out new ways to provide right-to-know and need-to-know content, not just titillating topics. Better use of technology is part of the answer.
On the other end of the equation, the online news consumer in the near future will have to pay something for reliable, thorough reporting with depth and breadth.
Otherwise you gets what you don’t pay for.
July, 2010